Historical Stages in the Commodification of the
Traditional Family Roles/Tasks
Food is an activity that has cultural reverberations.
Who prepares, what is prepared, and how you eat all shape social issues.
Progressive Era - Early 1900's:
| Campbell's canned soup ads advertise for women to buy its product because it's the best one |
| Advertisements used traditional gender images to encourage the consumption of their product by American families |
| Established the "Mom in the Kitchen" image |
| Industrialization, immigration, war, and economic depression changed workforce |
| Ads imply that by using their products, women were being more efficient and productive |
| Campbell's ads implied that by feeding children their product that they would be more healthy, fight diseases, and have enough energy to succeed in an economically competitive world |
1950: WHATABURGER is founded
1954: Burger King is founded
1955: McDonald's is founded
1960's:
| Cookbooks are published on how to get a man and keep him |
| Simultaneously, marital sex manuals are published that evoked women's role in cooking and food preparation in their prescriptions for women's marital sexual behavior |
| Manuals consisted of only ONE nonsexual issue: COOKING |
| Late 60's early 70's: Women's Movement |
| Publication and success of Playboy |
| Post WWII: fear that marriage was deteriorating |
| Cookbooks published showing more girls than boys in pictures |
| Process or convenience foods a growing phenomenon |
1979: McDonald's Happy Meal is introduced
2000: Campbell's ads
now show men preparing dinner because wife called home saying she was caught up
at work